Legal Bases and Procedure for Early Termination of Members of Parliament

The development paradigm of Russian parliamentarism, 2008 and 2020 amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation are directed towards expanding the power of the Russian parliament and the accountability of the executive branch to the supreme legislative body. In this regard, a logical question arises about strengthening the independence and autonomy (primarily from the executive branch) of the members of the Russian parliament (MP). However, instead of a logical increase in the independence of parliamentarians, recently Russia has introduced internal quasilabor standards of parliament, which, on the contrary, puts MP under party control. In addition, the existing anti-corruption standards for controlling the openness of the income, expenses and property obligations of MP also have serious shortcomings in terms of the severity of sanctions – up to the early termination of MP. The problem of legal reasons and the procedure for terminating the powers of a deputy of a representative authority is considered by the author comprehensively, taking into account the specifics of the status of a deputy. It should be noted that for the young Russian parliamentarism, the study of this procedure through the prism of the constitutional legal status of a deputy is of fundamental importance. The article analyzes the judicial practice of the reasons for the termination of the deputy’s powers, statistics on the application of anti-corruption legislation to deputies of representative authorities in 30 regions of the Federation from all Federal Districts of Russia. The author also explores new grounds for terminating the deputy’s powers, including regarding the practice of attending parliament, and concludes that a number of the current legislation used by the law enforcer (parliamentary majority, courts, prosecutor’s bodies) contradicts the tasks of legal regulation of the duties of MP, and doctrinally are not consistent with the model of a free mandate adopted in Russia in 1993. Thus, the domestic legislator needs to decide whether he/she continues to follow the model of a free mandate enshrined in the current Russian Constitution, or whether it is time to return (as it was in the Soviet period) to a model of an imperative mandate. If the legislator decides to use the model of a free mandate, then the new liability measures that are introduced into the legislation should be reviewed. If the legislator finally abandons the free mandate, which corresponds to a certain trend in world practice, then it is necessary to make appropriate point adjustments to the Russian Constitution, and provide for a procedure for recalling a deputy at the federal level; especially today in the context of growing digitalization, such a procedure can be done without damage conduct using electronic voting.

Keywords: parliament; member of parliament; MPs status; State Duma; Council of Federation; legislative body; deprivation of authority; party; faction